Chandni Chowk to China is one of the most important films to emerge from India in some time. The reasons for this are partly economic: it's being distributed by Warner Brothers, whose execs are hoping to make inroads into the huge market for Bollywood films across the world.

Chandni Chowk to China, the third directorial venture of Nikhil Advani after the highly successful Kal Ho Naa Ho and the failure Salaam-e-Ishq, arrives with great hope in the trade buzz being the first big-budget film of 2009. To rake in the moolah, the producers of the movie (Warner Brothers and Rimesh Sippy) follow ahead the Ghajini path by holding three to four shows a day before its release and calling it as a paid preview. But unfortunately, the film fails to hit a chord.

The Chandni Chowk of the title is a district of Old Delhi. One of its residents is a cook named Sidhu (Akshay Kumar), an unlucky dreamer, who thinks that he was a mosquito in a previous.

Things change when two visitors from China decide that he's the rebirth of an ancient warrior and manage to get him to relocate to their village to take on a bowler-hatted kung fu criminal (Gordon Liu).

If the story sounds familiar that's because it is. Director Nikhil Advani and screenwriter Shridhar Raghivan draw (perhaps unconsciously) on Kung Fu Panda and Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, and very knowingly on Kill Bill and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, even going so far as to use the talents of the latter two films' stunt co-ordinator Huen Chiu-Ku.

The movie, which hails as being one of the probable blockbusters being an Akshay Kumar movie, disappoints big time. The movie that starts off as a reincarnation drama eventually ends up as being a revenge drama with mix of sequences from old films (Seeta Aur Geeta, Chaalbaaz, etc.) such as identical twin sisters separated since birth, their coming face to face toward the finale, their encounter with their long lost father, etc.

The first half of the film is simply awful and highly numbed. It is only in the post interval portion that few action sequences (such as Akshay learning Kungfu, fighting against the villain) try to hold some interest. The screenplay does not hold tight and makes you feel restless for the major part of the film.

Akshay Kumar being the only factor makes you sit through the whole film. Deepika Padukone looks beautiful and hot but her act fails to captivate. Mithun Charaborty and Ranvir Shorey are all right. In the music category, except the songs sung by Kailash Kher and ‘Tere Naina’ the rest are strictly average. Cinematography is just acceptable.